Would You Drive An Electric Car That Came Out Of A Printer?

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It's not the worst thing to come out of a printer, right?

Local Motors shocked
the industry with the 3D-printed Strati at last year’s Detroit Auto Show and
with its monstrous, road-legal Rally Fighter. Currently, the Arizona-based
company is hard at work on creating the first lineup of 3D-printed electric
cars. Before you go
scoffing at the idea of driving around town in a printed vehicle, Local Motors has
already shown that its 3D-printed vehicles can work in the real world and the concept
looks much better than most vehicles on the road today.

John B. Rogers,
CEO and co-founder of Local Motors, stated: "At Local Motors, we are hellbent
on revolutionizing manufacturing. Car manufacturers have been stamping parts
the same way for more than 100 years. We now have the technology to make the
process and products better and faster by linking the online to the offline
through DDM. This process will create better and safer products, and we are doing
exactly that."

Community contest
winner, Kevin Lo, is responsible for the radical design of the project named Reload Redacted—Swim/Sport. His design was chosen by a panel of independent adjudicators, which happened to include Jay Leno, who praised
the design. The concept of the vehicle is simple, but revolutionary. A 3D-printed flexible chassis will serve as the base, while customers can choose
between different body styles. Local Motors plans to debut an
electric vehicle in the first quarter of 2016 that customers can actually
purchase.